try this first:
open a terminal and type:
 
top
 
and press enter
see which processes are running, and which seem to be hogging resources. You can then go into Mandrake Control Center and turn those services off if you are sure you don't need them.

My bet is that DMA isn't being properly enabled on his hard drive (I had this problem with early test versions of 2.6 on my ATA133 controller and "slow" was an understatement. It paused to process something as simple as a keypress). Try opening a terminal as root (Mandrake should have a root terminal somewhere in its menus) and typing hdparm followed by the designation of the drive you have Linux installed on. Since it's a notebook it most likely has only one HDD so this should be /dev/hda:
 

Code:

hdparm /dev/hda

 
Then copy and paste the results here.

Quote:Since it's a notebook it most likely has only one HDD so this should be /dev/hda:

Code:

hdparm /dev/hda

Then copy and paste the results here.


I type the above code in the terminal, but the system cannot find anything.

What do you mean open root terminal?
I cannot find the root terminal. I open the terminal"RXvt".
It has a following line on the screen:

[wang@localhost wang]$


Then I type the the code, nothing is found.

I have only one HDD. But I devided in 4 sections: C,D,E, and F
I installed WinXP in C, and applications in D.
I installed Linux in E.
C,D, and F are formated with NTFS.

What should I do now?

Try this. Go to the K menu icon on the bottom left and choose terminals, then X Term. Or, use the console that you already know is there, in your case RXvt.
 
In the konsole window type su
 
It will prompt for a password, Type in the password for root, that you should have chosen during the install. This would be the password for root, not the user password, unless you told Mandrake to use the same pasword for root and user. then type in hdparm /dev/hda.
 
Look for a line that says using dma = 1 (on). Note if it says on or off and post the result here.
 
It also looks like you have 4 partitions and I wonder if swap space got initialized during the install.

Quote:It also looks like you have 4 partitions and I wonder if swap space got initialized during the install.


Thanks.
My swap was gone.
After resetting the swap, it works fine.

This brings up an interesting question I've not yet found an answer for. I am convinced (through experience) that if you have at least 512 ram, you don't really need a swap space. I discovered that with that much ram, your machine is quicker when forcing memory through the ram instead of a swap space. The last Linux install I did, I didn't create a swap space, and everything ran like lightening. Recently, I had to do a new install, and I created a swap space because one of my games needed it for an install, and everything is a little slower.
Now that the game (Trespasser) is installed, is there an easy way to turn the swap space off so I can once again take advantage of my 512 ram?

You can use the commands swapon and swapoff (using the name of the swap partition as an argument) to activate and deactivate the swap space on demand but if you really want to disable it the best way is probably the comment out the swap line in /etc/fstab. That'll prevent the system from mounting and activating it at boot time.

Quote: ..but if you really want to disable it the best way is probably the comment out the swap line in /etc/fstab. That'll prevent the system from mounting and activating it at boot time.I'll give that a try, thanks!

This is indeed interesting. Assuming that the distro does not demand swap space, I'll have to try this. I know that Puppy Linux runs totally in RAM. I know that it is a sized down distro, but it does run quite fast. So, if you have enough RAM...

I read about this awhile back. There are very strong opinions for an against having a swap space when you have a lot of ram depending of course on what apps you are running. I made install with just /boot, / and /home with no swap space and the increase in speed was, in my opinion, significant.